DALLAS — Regardless of what happens when No. 1 Alabama visits Texas on Saturday, the game will be overanalyzed until talking heads turn blue.
If Alabama (1-0) does what Alabama does, oh, 99% of the time, Texas will again be mocked for not being ready for the Top 25 and certainly not the SEC in the future, let alone Big 12 now.
If somehow, 20-point underdog Texas (1-0) shocks pretty much everyone with the unthinkable upset, witty variations of “Texas is back” and all that entails will be everywhere for at least a week.
In short, one game in the second week of the season threatens to define everything that coach Steve Sarkisian has done to this point at Texas. He’s tried to dispel that notion, which is a little like trying to hold back the ocean with a screen door.
There’s a very good reason that Fox and ESPN each decided to send their pregame shows to Austin. The game has been an ongoing topic through spring and summer and has evolved to a near-obsession with Texas fans.
“That’s the first question somebody asks every time they see you,” Texas linebacker DeMarvion Overshown said this week.
Sarkisian is cautioning people to avoid snap judgments, another thankless task.
“I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is like, ‘this is going to be the game that’s going to define our program,’” Sarkisian said. “It might, it might not. I’m not that concerned about it. I’m more concerned about just the way we play the game.”
His oft-repeated goal is to be at AT&T Stadium in the Big 12 championship game, something that Texas has done exactly once since the game returned in 2017.
“This game has no impact on that,” Sarkisian said. “It’ll be great, it’s an awesome opponent, I want to play really well. I want to make sure that our guys play our style of football, our brand of football, and do it the way that I know we’re capable of doing it.”
To get a win and to change a narrative that has hung over the program since the January 2010 loss to Alabama in the national championship game. This is the first meeting of the two bluebloods since then.
“We don’t need superhuman efforts, what we need is people playing to what they’re capable of playing at,” Sarkisian said.
The Longhorns must deal with a team featuring elite talent that doesn’t beat itself, a Heisman-winning quarterback in Brice Young and especially edge rusher extraordinaire Will Anderson.
As an Alabama assistant, Sarkisian supposedly gave Anderson his nickname when he arrived on campus: The Terminator. It turned out to fit perfectly, named after the iconic relentless, unstoppable cyborg who first appeared in the ‘80s sci-fi classic of the same name.
Anderson had 17.5 sacks last season and will be matched against Texas freshman left tackle Kelvin Banks. While Banks is viewed as a future star, he’s one game into his college career.
And Texas redshirt freshman quarterback Quinn Ewers is making just his second start, the other coming against Louisiana-Monroe, which is decidedly not the Crimson Tide.
“For me, I try to approach every quarterback the same,” Anderson said this week. “But for a young quarterback like that, it’s going be fun. This is his first game, you know, going against a defense like this, so we’re just going to go out there and do our thing and we’re not going to try to do nothing more difficult out there and play the game plan that our coach gives us.”
Expect Alabama to bring pressure early and often to try to rattle the offensive line and Ewers, Anderson said.
“They haven’t probably seen a team like us before and to go out there and try to get them roused up a little bit, go in there and get pressure on them early on,” Anderson said.
Ewers has heard plenty and seen enough of the Alabama defense to have an understanding of the challenge.
“They’re fast,” Ewers said. “They do everything the right way.”
